Chemicals Are Not In Control

This past week went reasonably well in maintaining my discipline and structure until yesterday. Because it was Sunday, I did not follow any of my discipline in controlling my appetite for food. I had hard cider, allowed myself to eat junk food, and had a milkshake. So when I went to bed, I used an unfiltered computer in our apartment to look at porn. And I did the same this morning after skipping Mass. I know my appetites are connected. I've known this for a long time; it's nothing new. Giving in to my appetites in one area leads to weakness in others. Bad choices lead to bad choices.

While my housemate was out, I put up two notes saying "sorry" around the apartment, apologizing for not keeping our mutually agreed upon commitment to daily Mass. He did not respond to them, so I got an attitude. I purposely didn't go downstairs after he got home until it was too late for us to pray Night Prayer, another mutually agreed upon commitment. This is a reaction I can control but choose not to. It is not something I need meds for, though some suggest I do. It is a matter of discipline. I could have, and still can, control myself; I just choose not to.

Let's go with the popular perspective that so many of our emotional responses are out of control because chemical signals are out of whack or unbalanced, and we have no choice but to respond to them. The wisdom of the day is that we need another chemical to help diminish the chemicals causing us problems. This indicates a belief that if we feel something, we have to react to it. This is untrue. The more we respond to a chemical, the stronger the urge to continue to react gets. Combined with our enemy's efforts, this can make us feel overwhelmed, but it is just a feeling. We don't need chemicals to counteract chemicals; we need discipline and structure with a dash of self-denial.

Psychology has convinced many priests that we are not responsible for our behaviors because chemicals are involved. So, we are not culpable and accountable for the sins we commit. And so we need medication to help us. I do not believe that. This has made us more reliant on science than on God. This is why many in the Church no longer believe in mortal sin and its effect on our soul or in the possibility of divinization. If chemicals are responsible for our behavior, what hope do we have?

In Ralph Martin's book A Church in Crisis; "he said to his fellow priest: "Let's face it. Sometimes we use the three conditions that are necessary to commit a mortal sin as a way to rationalize a choice we can actually make to sin. We decieve ourselves into thinking that the Gravley wrong action we are doing isn't being done with sufficient reflection or full consent of the will when in fact we are actually freely choosing to do it, although with less than full consciousness...we often try to cover over our truly free choice to go about an action with rationalization and self-justification… "and I would add with psychological excuse-making.

On my way out the door this morning, my housemate said, "make it a great day." He said this jokingly, but it's true in many ways. We have been lied to and told we have no choice when it comes to how we feel, especially if we are convinced that everything we feel is because of chemicals and is not under our control. If that is true, we have no choice in what kind of day we have. If it is true but also with the added truth that demons are involved and that we have free will, then it becomes more accurate. We return to being participants in our lives rather than victims of them.

Written 2/15/21

Human-written, AI spell-checked

Image from Henricksen19 at Pixaby.com